MARUTHI CHARITABLE TRUST Vs. GOVERNMENT OF ANDHRA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These two writ petitions have been filed by so-called charitable trusts for a Mandamus to declare the action of the respondents in threatening to close down the alleged purified water plants purportedly being run by them as a measure of philanthropy, as illegal and arbitrary.

(2.) In their affidavits, the Secretary and Managing Trustee of the respective petitioners pleaded that the petitioners are voluntary and non-profit organizations established to provide water facility to the urban slum areas and that, with that purpose in view, they have established pure drinking water plants based on reverse osmosis (RO) technology and that they have been supplying water to the general public on 'no loss or no profit' basis, at a very nominal cost. They have further pleaded that at the instance of the traders involved in sale of packaged drinking water at high prices, the respondents have been interfering with the activity of the petitioners.

(3.) It is the pleaded case of the petitioners that under Rule 49(28) of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Rules, 1955, no person shall manufacture, sell or exhibit for sale packaged drinking water except under the Bureau of Indian Standards Certification Mark, that as the petitioners have not been selling water through packaged form, the said Rule is not attracted and that, therefore, they are not liable to take out any certificate from the Bureau of Indian Standards.